There's a point in every successful poem where the reader becomes emotionally entangled. We might call it the "heart-point" of a poem. It's that moment when emotional response begins. 

It can happen with a title, like "Tears, Idle Tears" or "Do not go gentle into that good night," or it can come at the end, as in Sylvia Plath's, "Strumpet Song." The feeling can be sadness, anger, joy, wonder, guilt, or any other flavor you choose. Whatever emotion you're going for, the heart-point in your poem matters.

Let's take a look at a really simple two-line poem and see if we can find the heart-point. The poem is the teacher's favorite, "In a Station of the Metro,” by Ezra Pound, first published in 1913.

In a Station of the Metro 
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The heart-point isn't in the setting-making, technical-toned title. It isn't even in the word "apparition," although the word is pivotal to the poem's emotional impact.

It's actually in the word "petals." And the emotion that starts there is hope. It's impossible for most of us to think of Spring or flowers without feeling at least a wisp of hope. The reader's hope, however frail, is engaged with this word.

What comes next is a soft-landing, which Pound brazenly accomplishes by doubling down on traditionally banal adjectives. Remove the word "wet" and you have a crash landing. The word "black" is an intentional mortal shadow, but its threat is checked by the Holy Word "wet" which, in addition to its obvious sexual and religious connections, also has a lot to do with the chemical and biological foundations of life itself. 

So, in placing the heart point where he did, Pound captures the feeling of sudden realization that is the entire purpose of the poem. His satori-in-a-bottle finishes with lightning because you feel hope-fear-hope in such rapid succession. 

The heart-point of a poem is a vital element that many poets overlook, or underestimate. But the best poets not only know how to use it; they know how to use it as a foundation for brilliance.

If you'd like some feedback for your poetry or a bit of help polishing your words, just click one of the buttons below. Or email @ [email protected]

One of the sad realities of poetry is that virtually every poem misses more readers than it hits. Even famous poems, like "The Raven" or "Nothing Gold Can Stay," impress only a fraction of the readers who encounter them. When it comes to poems posted online, or poems published in journals, the odds of engaging the average reader are steep. 

Most readers don't finish poems, and even when they do read them all the way to the last line (without skipping), there's usually a point of disengagement before the last line falls. They may technically read all the way to the end, but their thoughts are on who did or didn't text back, or how the cat's doing, as they're reading.

Way back in the candle-lit nineteenth century, Mr. Poe insisted that the longest any poem could be and still hold a reader's attention was 100 lines. That was a century before the Internet and social media.

These days, many readers jump right from the title to the last line.

This seems cruel to poets, and in some ways, it is a cruel reality, but it simply reflects the fact that, for most people, thirty-seconds of attention is a lot. Even from someone who's blood-related to you, or personally mentioned in your poem.

A part of every reader is waiting for your poem to fail. It's a form of confirmation bias, which means the default assumption is: if you were any good, you'd already be famous. Since you're not, you must be bad. Then if anything is off in the poem, it confirms this initial idea.  And by "anything" I mean grammar errors, typos, cliches, weak images, dull language, or glitchy rhythm and meter.

The instant a reader (or editor) spots something "off" in your poem, they're going to scroll away, swipe away, or flip the page. They won't feel cheated, because poems are almost always free, but they'll stand confident in the idea that your work is average or below average and all they'll likely remember is the part that failed.

AI can't (yet) help you with this issue. People don't read AI's poems, either.

So what can you do? 

Two things. The first is to accept the reality of confirmation bias. The second is to eliminate all obvious errors in your poems. This means putting more time into each poem. It means setting new poems aside for a while and editing and polishing them after you've had a chance to get some distance. 

There's simply no other way. 

To be honest, this is very good news. There seems to be something in human nature that shrugs off the notion of "toss away" poetry, or disposable poems. I'm not saying that all poems should, be weighty or profound, but I think it's a very good thing that some part of us still expects something special each time we read a new poem. There's no shame in wanting artistry from an artist!

So, the way to stop the scroll is to stop your own scroll and spend more time on each of your poems to be sure you don't provide convenient escape routes for readers.  
 
If you'd like some feedback for your poetry or a bit of help polishing your words, just click one of the buttons below. Or email @ [email protected]

As I've mentioned many times, the best poems smack you in the nose with a bit of surprise. Some poems, like Allen Ginsberg's, "Howl," or Charles Bukowski's, "Girl on the Escalator," seem built almost completely out of surprise left hooks meant to knock you out of your normal senses. Other poems, like Plath's, "Daddy," or Sexton's, "You, Doctor Martin," turn the surprise volume up to eleven before they even really get going, just by striking an attitude of power from what society expects should be a victim's perspective.

But poems don't have to be revolutionary or controversial to surprise. A single line, or even a single word, can suffice. For example, May Swenson's poem, "All That Time," burns straight into memory mostly due to her brilliant use of gender pronouns. By attributing "he" and "her" to two trees, and personifying their entangled growth, she captures a powerful poetic vision that is poignant and perpetually surprising.       

In fact, it's basically impossible to write a poem that doesn't do something new. Like snowflakes, poems are infinitely unique. Each poem is a one-of-a-kind "fingerprint" that speaks to a specific creative inspiration. Every time you write a poem, even when the poem fails, you make something fresh. It may be a Big Discovery that you proudly recognize, like uncovering a new theme or inventing a new stanza. It may be something you never even consciously notice, like using a perfectly placed slant-rhyme or dactyl. The point is: part of what draws poets back to writing again and again is the sense of discovery. And part of what draws readers back to your poems is the promise of surprise.

The challenge is to integrate surprise into your poetry in way that draws attention, but also rings true. Diane Seuss's poem, "Glosa," is a perfect example of how to do this. Take a look at it by clicking the image above. The poem turns on the lines:

...Caligula,
who cut off tongues and fucked his sister.

This single punctuation-point of surprise, like a sudden uppercut, defines the entire poem and shatters its otherwise pensive veneer. The scholarly tedium of life and the wildest sense of perversion are combined in these lines to define the poem's theme, but also to wrangle something new with words.

The lesson to take away here is to look at your poems like presents, both to yourself and to the reader. Wrap them carefully and make the impact of opening them an experience the reader will never forget.
 
If you'd like some feedback for your poetry or a bit of help polishing your words, just click one of the buttons below. Or email @ [email protected]